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Sakmongkol ak 47

ariff.sabri@gmail.com

Monday, 29 September 2008

Much hopes are attached to our new finance minister. Many hope he will steer the economy well. His only qualification, doing justice to these hopes appear to be the fact that he is a different person from Pak Lah. Therefore, being different, we expect him to offer some new ideas.

This kind of fixation with the idea that something fresh will usher in new and fresh ideas has been proven futile. When Pak Lah took over Tun Mahathir the last time, everyone were jubilant in heralding a new openness or even some transplanted form of glasnost. What happened since then? The same canaries who sung songs of praises the last time, this time around, are tripping over each other to slay Pak Lah Lah.

Therefore sakmongkol says, do not place high bets on our new finance minister. He has already showed his ‘mental sloth-ness’ over the handling of our economy. He has summarily dismissed the merits of re-pegging the Malaysian Ringgit.

Sakmongkol is sure Tun Mahathir will feel vindicated. During the financial crises of 1998, sakmongkol is sure that besides Anwar Ibrahim, the local high priest of the IMF chapter, there were some among his cabinet members who thought the old man had gone bonkers. And knowing now the state of Pak lah’s mental agility, at that time , he was just following Tun Mahathir. In all probability, he didn’t know what it was all about.

The Bush administration is now fighting hard to pass through a very divided and questioning Congress a USD 700 billion rescue package deal to save the financial institutions, businesses of all sorts like bakeries, retailers etc.

So if we were to apply the Najibnomics principles in absolute trust of the market, then he would want to waste no time in advising USA to rely on an IMF package and total reliance on free market.

3
comments:

I've been to this Islamic Banking seminar once. One that stuck my mind in that particular seminar is "The mother of Riba is the generation of money". As you know Riba is haram. The western banking system is based on Riba. This very system is the standard of banking all over the world. Even Islamic Banking that we have now is actually the modification version of that syatem. The point highlighted is that from say RM1m hard cash deposited to bank, by law the bank is allowed to lend out RM25m. That is creating money from thin air or should I say from a touch of keyboard and the money exist all over the place on the computer screen, and that is THE GENERATION OF MONEY. Gone was the day any single dollar created got to be back by a piece of precious gold somewhere. It have been said that 66% of the currency floating around in the USA is that kind of money. 32% in the UK. About 16% in Malaysia. So sooner or later the economy that is based on that platform shall collapse. Why? because the real economy no longer can catchup with the money floating around. No wonder Islam prohibited RIBA. That is my school of tots for the day.

It's scary the way the new minister of finance dismissed the possibility of pegging the ringgit offhand. Even Zainal Aznam, late of ISIS who vigorously defended the ringgit peg in '98 but who obviously also knows which side his bread is buttered, laughed off the notion of repegging the ringgit. It's the offhanded way of swatting off the suggestion that's scary.

While the tv is awash with reports of Bush, Obama and Mccain piously making a case for a massive bailout of America's banks, here are some videos of what ordinary Americans are doing on Wall Street: